At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress.  He cried; he besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting out: 

“Oh no!  Oh no!”

“I want to, I do,” she said.  “Have you the money?”

No, he had not got the money.  He would have given his life to have the money!  Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so very childish.  All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and gave proof of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and grew kind.  She pushed him away softly.

“Come, my pet, let me pass; I must.  Be reasonable.  You’re a baby boy, and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after my own affairs.  Just think it over a bit.  Now your brother’s a man; what I’m saying doesn’t apply to him.  Oh, please do me a favor; it’s no good telling him all this.  He needn’t know where I’m going.  I always let out too much when I’m in a rage.”

She began laughing.  Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on the forehead: 

“Good-by, baby,” she said; “it’s over, quite over between us; d’you understand?  And now I’m off!”

And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room.  Her last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears:  “It’s over, quite over!” And he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet.  There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting Nana had disappeared.  Philippe alone remained there in the young woman’s bare embrace forever and ever.  She did not deny it:  she loved him, since she wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity.  It was over, quite over.  He breathed heavily and gazed round the room, suffocating beneath a crushing weight.  Memories kept recurring to him one after the other—­memories of merry nights at La Mignotte, of amorous hours during which he had fancied himself her child, of pleasures stolen in this very room.  And now these things would never, never recur!  He was too small; he had not grown up quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because he was a bearded man.  So then this was the end; he could not go on living.  His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was merged.  Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother remained—­his brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose enjoyment drove him mad with jealousy?  It was the end of all things; he wanted to die.

All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over the house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot.  Downstairs on the bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and Francois.  Zoe came running across the drawing room and seemed surprised at sight of Georges.  She asked him if he were waiting for Madame.  Yes, he was waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her an answer to a question.  And when he was alone he set to work and searched.  Finding nothing else to suit his purpose, he took up in the dressing room a pair of very sharply pointed scissors with which Nana had a mania for ceaselessly trimming herself, either by polishing her skin or cutting off little hairs.  Then for a whole hour he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket and his fingers tightly clasped round the scissors.